Covent Garden (pronounced /ˈkɒvənt/) is a district in London, England, located on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin’s Lane and Drury Lane. The area is mainly associated with the former fruit and vegetable market located in the central square which is now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as “Covent Garden”. The area is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre; north of which is mainly given over to independent shops centred on Neal’s Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers, and most of the elegant buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the London Transport Museum.

Though mainly fields until the 16th century, it was briefly settled when it became the heart of the Anglo-Saxon trading town of Lundenwic. Returning to fields, part of the area was walled off for use as arable land and orchards by Westminster Abbey by 1200, and was referred to as “the garden of the Abbey and Convent”. In 1540 Henry VIII took the land belonging to the Abbey, including, what by now was called “the Covent Garden”, and this was later granted to the Earls of Bedford. The 4th Earl commissioned Inigo Jones to build some fine house in order to attract wealthy tenants. Jones designed the Italianate arcaded square along with the church of St Paul’s. The design of the square was new to London, and had a significant influence on modern town planning in London, acting as the prototype for the laying-out of new estates as London grew.

The fruit and vegetable market began as a small open air market to the south of the fashionable square around 1654. Gradually, both the market and the area became disreputable with taverns, theatres, coffee-houses and prostitutes; and the gentry began to move away, and rakes, wits and playwrights moved in. By the 18th century Covent Garden had become a well-known red-light district, attracting notable prostitutes such as Betty Careless and Jane Douglas; and Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, a guidebook to the prostitutes and whore houses, became a bestseller. An act of parliament was drawn up to control the area, and Charles Fowler’s neo-classical building was erected in 1830 to both cover and help organise the market, and the area declined as a pleasure-ground as the market grew and further buildings were added – the Floral Hall, Charter Market and in 1904 the Jubilee Market. However, by the end of the 1960s, traffic congestion was causing problems, and in 1974 the market relocated to the New Covent Garden Market about three miles (5 km) south-west at Nine Elms. The central building re-opened as a shopping centre in 1980, and is now a popular tourist location containing cafes, pubs, small shops and a craft market called the Apple Market; along with another market held in the Jubilee Hall.